Guys, I can't record bass...

[OlScrapIron]

Man... I don't even know what to do with all the advise here! First off, I agree that my playing is not the best... I'm a guitarist and we all know that aint the same thing as a real bass player! I know bassists that touch the instrument and it just sounds amazing... those are the guys (obviously) I have had the best "luck" with. I also agree the horn is kinda lame and yes, there is an option to shut it off and I did this time. The D112 is usually my go-to for the bass cab, but as someone else stated, the SUB is really mid-heavy, like it should be a picked punk rock bass, and the D6 sucks the midrange right the F*ck out, that's why I went there. For Rock, metal and punk stuff I usually like picked bass but acoustic music likes it fingered... hm. I hear the flat wound suggestion but I have never really experimented with them. A fretless bass with flat wound Rotos would be a righteous experiment if I could find one. Also, I'm sure the one note thing is a room mode during tracking and that can be a bitch to correct. If it's not one note it's another. I ended up just going DI this time through the UA Twinfinity 710 and I'm ok with it. I'll post the song in the "Listen to my stuff" forum once I get a mix. Thank you everyone. Plenty of ideas to work with!

[OlScrapIron]

Man... I don't even know what to do with all the advise here! First off, I agree that my playing is not the best... I'm a guitarist and we all know that aint the same thing as a real bass player! I know bassists that touch the instrument and it just sounds amazing... those are the guys (obviously) I have had the best "luck" with. I also agree the horn is kinda lame and yes, there is an option to shut it off and I did this time. The D112 is usually my go-to for the bass cab, but as someone else stated, the SUB is really mid-heavy, like it should be a picked punk rock bass, and the D6 sucks the midrange right the F*ck out, that's why I went there. For Rock, metal and punk stuff I usually like picked bass but acoustic music likes it fingered... hm. I hear the flat wound suggestion but I have never really experimented with them. A fretless bass with flat wound Rotos would be a righteous experiment if I could find one. Also, I'm sure the one note thing is a room mode during tracking and that can be a bitch to correct. If it's not one note it's another. I ended up just going DI this time through the UA Twinfinity 710 and I'm ok with it. I'll post the song in the "Listen to my stuff" forum once I get a mix. Thank you everyone. Plenty of ideas to work with!

[Drone]

My latest love is Fender 9120 black nylong tapewound strings. Bought a set years ago, never really used them as I mostly play five string. I picked up a little 4 string and restrang it with them, love, love, love.

They're cheap, so far been pretty durable, comfy as all hell to play fingerstyle and sound great. Figuring under $20 is easier than a whole new bass.

Also, just solder that pickup wire straight to the output jack, job done problem solved. (Honestly I ran my bass like this in several bands for several years)

[drumsound]

I've been using a DI only on a lot of projects in the last few years. I track with compression, sometimes A LOT of compression. When it comes to mix time, very often its a simple task of setting the fader in the right place. If there's EQ, it has to do with altering the attitude of the track. If the player isn't digging in, I mess around in the upper mids to get a little aggression. Sometimes I want more or less low bass, and I make that adjustment. If there's a "note gone wild" I often automate it is some what o another. Sometimes an Active EQ is the better solution for that.

[OlScrapIron]

Thanks drumsound, to clear up what I posted before I tracked with the D6 and DI but ended up only mixing the DI. It was doing the job until my iMac completely took a dump. I will have a whole different rant post with that story I'm sure...

As a side question to this thread: How the hell does one get that "Wooten" sound... I know his playing style and unbelievable ability are main factors, but what is that kind of tone? The way I would describe it is "burpy". It always cuts through so you can hear exactly what he is doing. Whether he slaps or picks it sounds great. Definitely not a "round" sound. There's some growl and plenty of buzz sometimes too...

[AndersonSoundRecording]

A friend of mine once said "bass is a monster", and it's true in so many ways.

Most of what I record is in a live situation, so I often mic the cabinet in addition to having a DI. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes not, but having a good clean DI is gold. I use the Radial JDI - anytime I've been forced to go direct out of the head, I've noticed the difference. So that's one bit: use a really good DI.

When I get it home, I'll generally run that sucker out of my DAW and through a SansAmp Bass driver pedal. I'll feed that through a nice, clean, phat transformer mic amp (I use the Hardy M-2 for this), and then I'll often run that through one side of my Avalon 747 - not for compression usually, but for the tone & EQ I'll tweak to my heart's content and retrack the bass. Just make sure to compensate for the latency of the round trip.

If I'm in a rush, I'll resort to using an amp simulating plug-in instead, but the principal is the same - you get to tweak the bass amp sound in the context of the mix - not out-of-context in the room.

Sometimes the clean DI is good enough all by itself. Compress, EQ, work on Grammy acceptance speech.